Sick days

There was an article in "The Local", Swedish online news in English, yesterday about sick leave. Rather than describe the article I'll just directly quote the beginning of it here:

"Sweden is notorious for its high rate of sick leave, but figures released on Friday show the problem easing.

Swedes aged between 16 and 64 claimed they could not work due to ill health for an average of 39.9 days in 2006, according to figures from the Swedish Social Insurance Administration (Försäkringskassan), which controls state payments to the sick."

40 sick days/year! That's 8 weeks! (Keep in mind that I believe that everyone in Sweden starts off with 6 weeks of vacation per year.) And, the problem is easing?!?! According to the article, last year, the average was 41.3 days/year.

So, this can't be right! At this rate, if I were an average person, I would have taken -40 divided by 12 times 2- SEVEN sick days already since I've been here about two months! Clearly, I'm missing something - or just unusually healthy by Swedish standards. The only catch I could find was that the stats include Swedes who are on health-related early retirement. Ok, so that'll offset the number some but isn't that still really high?